Cornwall’s Atlantic coast

In a superb position on a knuckle of cliffs overlooking fine golden sands and Atlantic rollers, its glorious natural advantages have made NEWQUAY the premier resort of north Cornwall. It is difficult to imagine a lineage for the place that extends more than a few decades, but the “new quay” was built in the fifteenth century in what was already a long-established fishing port, up to then more colourfully known as Towan Blistra. The town was given a boost in the nineteenth century when a railway was constructed across the peninsula for china clay shipments; with the trains came a swelling stream of seasonal visitors.

The centre of town is a somewhat tacky parade of shops and restaurants from which lanes lead to ornamental gardens and cliff-top lawns. The main attraction is the beaches. Surfing competitions and festivals run through the summer, when the town can get very crowded.

In the crook of Towan Head, Towan Beach is the most central of the seven miles of firm sandy beaches that line the coast around Newquay. Town beaches such as this and Porth Beach, with its grassy headland, can get very busy with families in high season, and are popular with surfers all year, though the latter are more partial to Watergate Bay to the north, and Fistral Bay, west of Towan Head.

On the other side of East Pentire Head from Fistral, Crantock Beach – reachable over the Gannel River by ferry or upstream footbridge – is usually less crowded, and has a lovely backdrop of dunes and undulating grassland. South of Crantock, Holywell Bay and the three-mile expanse of Perran Beach, enhanced by caves and natural rock arches, are also very popular with surfers.

PADSTOW attracts nearly as many holiday-makers as Newquay, but has a very different feel. Enclosed within the estuary of the Camel – the only river outlet of any size on Cornwall’s north coast – the town has long retained its position as North Cornwall’s principal fishing port, and can boast some of the county’s best seafood restaurants. The harbour is jammed with launches and boats offering cruises in the bay, while a regular ferry carries people across the river to ROCK – close to the isolated church of St Enodoc (John Betjeman’s burial place) and to the good beaches around Polzeath. Padstow is also known for its annual Obby Oss festival, a May Day romp when a local in horse costume prances through the town preceded by a masked and club-wielding “teaser”, in a spirited re-enactment of an old fertility rite.

Despite its romantic name and its famous castle standing aloof on a promontory to the north, the village of TINTAGEL is for the most part a dreary collection of cafés and B&Bs. The wild and unspoiled coast around the village, though, provides an appropriate backdrop for the forsaken ruins of Tintagel Castle. It was the twelfth-century chronicler Geoffrey of Monmouth who first popularized the notion that this was the birthplace of King Arthur, son of Uther Pendragon and Ygrayne, though the visible ruins in fact belong to a Norman stronghold occupied by the earls of Cornwall. After sporadic spurts of rebuilding, the castle was allowed to decay, and most of it had been washed into the sea by the sixteenth century. The remains of a sixth-century Celtic monastery on the headland have provided important insights into how the country’s earliest monastic houses were organized.

Three miles east of Tintagel, the port of BOSCASTLE lies compressed within a narrow ravine drilled by the rivers Jordan and Valency, and ending in a twisty harbour. The tidy riverfront bordered by thatched and lime-washed cottages was the scene of a devastating flash flood in 2004, but most of the damage has now been repaired. Above and behind, you can see more seventeenth- and eighteenth-century cottages on a circular walk that traces the valley of the Valency for about a mile to reach Boscastle’s graceful parish church of St Juliot, tucked away in a peaceful glen, where Thomas Hardy once worked as a young architect.

Just four miles from the Devon border, Cornwall’s northernmost town of BUDE is built around an estuary surrounded by a fine expanse of sands. The town has sprouted a crop of hotels and holiday homes, though these have not unduly spoilt the place nor the magnificent cliffy coast surrounding it.

Of the excellent beaches hereabouts, the central Summerleaze is clean and spacious, but the mile-long Widemouth Bay, south of town, is the main focus of the holiday crowds (though bathing can be dangerous near the rocks at low tide). Surfers also congregate five miles down the coast at Crackington Haven, wonderfully situated between 430ft crags at the mouth of a lush valley. To the north of Bude, acres-wide Crooklets is the scene of surfing and life-saving demonstrations and competitions. A couple of miles further on, Sandy Mouth holds a pristine expanse of sand with rock pools beneath the encircling cliffs. It’s a short walk from here to another surfers’ delight, Duckpool, a tiny sandy cove flanked by jagged reefs at low tide, and dominated by the three-hundred-foot Steeple Point.